You won. Now collect. Collecting a judgment in Washington.

Judgment creditors

You won. Now collect.

The court's job ended at the signature. This is the order I do things in, with the statutes that govern each step.

The order I look in
The debtor is a personThe debtor is a company
  1. Washington is a community-property state. A debt either spouse incurred during the marriage is presumed to be a community debt, and community property, including the other spouse's wages, answers for it. A spouse's separate debt does not reach the other's earnings (RCW 26.16.200). Whether a debt is community or separate is counsel's call; the search runs on both names either way. Assets abroad are reachable too, but a Washington judgment must be recognized there first: Canada, Britain and Australia do that readily, much of Asia and the Gulf do not, and a court in London or Singapore will sometimes freeze what an American court cannot.
  2. 01Real propertyRecorder by name, then the Assessor. The lien attaches at entry in the county of judgment; anywhere else, the day you file an abstract with that county's clerk (RCW 4.56.200). Do not count on the house: the homestead exemption shields equity up to the county's median sale price, about $940,000 in King County (RCW 6.13.030), and the sheriff will not sell land until the non-exempt personal property has been tried first. Out-of-state land counts once the judgment is domesticated there. Abroad, most countries run a searchable land registry; Britain's and Canada's are online, and a condo in Vancouver or a flat in London is findable from Seattle.
  3. 02WagesFind the employer. A continuing garnishment pays every payday. A foreign employer is beyond a Washington writ; the judgment has to be recognized where the paycheck is issued.
  4. 03Business interestsThe Secretary of State by owner's name, then DOR and L&I. Equipment can be seized; an LLC share can be tapped. Abroad, OpenCorporates covers most registries. The BVI, Cayman and Nevis name no one, which is why people incorporate there.
  5. 04Payment processorsSquare, Stripe, Toast, Shopify. Garnish the money in transit, before it reaches an account.
  6. 05Payment appsVenmo, Cash App, PayPal hold balances; serve the operator. Zelle holds nothing but names the bank. Wise and Revolut have American affiliates; Alipay and WeChat Pay do not, and a balance there needs a lawyer in that country.
  7. 06Cash on premisesTill tap or keeper through the sheriff. The deputy at the counter gets calls returned.
  8. 07Vehicles, boats, aircraftDOL with a permissible purpose; FAA and Coast Guard are public. Mind the $15,000 exemption and the title date. Yachts and jets are often flagged in the Caymans, the Marshall Islands or the Isle of Man; those registries are searchable, and a vessel in a foreign port can be arrested there.
  9. 08Liens and lendersUCC filings, deeds of trust, bankruptcy schedules, and credit reports where permissible under the FCRA. The map to every bank the debtor uses.
  10. 09Bank accountsSupplemental proceedings, then writs to the banks from step 08, safe-deposit boxes included. Usually thin by now. A foreign bank ignores a Washington writ; getting at the account means recognition proceedings there, or a freezing order from a court that grants them.
  11. 10ReceivablesClients, tenants and buyers who owe the debtor; security deposits and escrow balances; a tax refund once it lands. Garnishable like a bank.
  12. 11Brokerage, crypto, insuranceDiscovery, statements and on-chain tracing. Retirement accounts are nearly all exempt; do not pay to chase them. Crypto has no country, but the exchange does: an American exchange answers a subpoena, an offshore one answers a court in its own jurisdiction, and British and Singaporean courts have been quickest to order disclosure and freezes.
  13. 12The unusualPatents, trademarks and royalties at the USPTO, and at WIPO and the EU office for foreign marks. Mineral rights and oil-and-gas leases at the county recorder. Watches, art, wine and jewelry on insurance schedules and auction records. Domain names and liquor licenses.
  14. 13Inheritances and lawsuitsA parent's probate file names the debtor as heir, and the distribution is reachable when it lands. So is a settlement, or a case the debtor is bringing as plaintiff. Watch for a disclaimer filed to steer the money to a sibling. Foreign probates are public in most common-law countries.
  15. 14Transfers and trustsThe house deeded to a sister, the truck retitled to the LLC, the home moved into a family trust. A revocable trust is still the debtor's money; a spendthrift trust someone else funded mostly is not. A creditor can unwind a transfer made up to four years earlier under chapter 19.40 RCW. Cook Islands and Nevis trusts exist to defeat exactly this; the transfer into them is still voidable here, and the debtor can be ordered to bring the money back.
  1. A company has no exemptions and no paycheck, but it has to keep money in a bank to make payroll, and it can dissolve and reopen under a new name. The search runs faster, follows the money out as well as in, and ends at the owners. A foreign company can be sued here if it did business here; collecting from it abroad means recognizing the judgment where its assets are.
  2. 01Is it still operating?PACER first: a bankruptcy filing stops every step below, and the schedules list the assets for you. Then DOR and L&I filings, CCFS status, the lights on. A live business has cash flow to reach; a dead one has assets to seize and a successor to find. For a foreign company, its home registry: Companies House, the Canadian provinces, the EU registers through North Data.
  3. 02Processors and merchant accountsCard revenue settles daily. A writ on the processor catches it every day. Stripe, PayPal and Shopify settle for merchants in most countries through American entities.
  4. 03ReceivablesCustomers, a general contractor, a property manager, an insurer. Served with a writ, they pay you instead. The work is learning who they are. Building permits name the contractor on every active job and the owner paying for it. Contract awards on USAspending and in state contract records show who pays the company and how much, though a government payer brings its own rules. Press releases, trade press, local news and the company's own posts announce the new client, the distribution deal and the big order, often with the other party's name. An American customer of a foreign debtor is the easiest money in this list: the debtor is abroad, the receivable is here.
  5. 04Factors and cash advancesA company short of cash sells its invoices to a factor or borrows against tomorrow's card sales from a merchant cash advance funder. Both file UCC financing statements, and both draw a map: the factor's notice names the customers who pay, and the funder's daily debit names the account the revenue lands in. Three or four advances stacked in a few months mark a company in trouble, and sometimes a transfer worth examining.
  6. 05Bank accountsOperating and payroll. No exemption, and a company cannot run long without one. UCC filings and the processor's settlement account name the bank. A foreign bank needs foreign process; a foreign bank's American branch does not.
  7. 06Cash on premisesTill tap or keeper through the sheriff. Leverage as much as money.
  8. 07Equipment, inventory, vehiclesAll by writ, no exemption. Check UCC filings first; the equipment lender stands ahead of you. Inventory in transit shows up in import records, and cargo can be attached at the port.
  9. 08Real propertyOften held by an affiliated LLC that leases it back. A transfer to examine, not a dead end. Foreign land registries are searchable in most of the countries a Washington company would own property in.
  10. 09Liens, lenders and the credit reportUCC filings, deeds of trust, and a business credit report from D&B or Experian, which needs no permissible purpose but rarely goes deeper than the UCC index for a small company. The map to the lenders, here and abroad.
  11. 10Contracts, licenses, domainsA liquor license, a franchise agreement, a long-term supply contract or a domain can be worth more than the inventory, and most of them sell. A domain is wherever the registrar is.
  12. 11Intellectual propertyPatents, trademarks, copyrights, software, the customer list. The USPTO assignment records show who holds a security interest, and whether the marks moved to an affiliate the month the suit was filed. Royalties owed by licensees are receivables and can be garnished. The IP itself is reached through the court: an order to assign it, or a receiver who licenses or sells it. Foreign marks sit at WIPO and the EU office.
  13. 12Subsidiaries and ownership stakesA company that owns part of an LLC is reached by charging order, which takes the distributions but not the vote, and is the only remedy the statute allows (RCW 25.15.256). Shares in a subsidiary corporation can be levied and sold. Annual reports name governors, and a parent company often appears as one.
  14. 13Digital assetsCrypto held at Coinbase, Kraken or another American exchange can be reached with a writ on the exchange, as with a bank. A self-custodied wallet takes a court order directed at the company and its officers. On-chain tracing shows where the coins went, and the exchanges at the other end answer subpoenas.
  15. 14Transfers outThe assets that matter most are often the ones that left. Washington's voidable transactions act (RCW 19.40) lets a creditor undo a transfer made to hinder creditors, or made for less than fair value while the company was insolvent, for four years afterward. The badges are familiar: an insider on the receiving end, a transfer after the suit was filed, the debtor still using what it sold, everything going at once. The record shows them: a deed to an affiliate, a UCC termination, a new LLC at the same address, a trademark assignment, equipment sold that never left the shop.
  16. 15Insider loans and paymentsRead the loan files both ways. Money the company lent its owners is a receivable, garnishable from them. Money the owners lent the company and repaid themselves ahead of you, while it was insolvent, can be recovered for a year after the payment. Salaries that rose as revenue fell, and management fees paid to a related company, tell the same story.
  17. 16The ownersPersonal guarantees on the loans and the lease. Distributions taken while the debt went unpaid. A successor company with the same phone number and staff. Alter ego, when the books show the company was the owner's wallet. A foreign parent or a BVI holding company is where the chain usually goes cold, and where a licensed investigator with foreign registry access earns the fee.
  18. 17Insurance and claimsA pending claim, a suit the company is bringing, a policy that covers the loss you are collecting. Lloyd's and the European carriers pay claims through American agents who can be served.
  19. 18A receiverSupplemental proceedings come first: an officer answers under oath, and the answers often surface what the record does not. When the assets are many, moving or hard to sell, counsel can ask the court to appoint a receiver after judgment (RCW 7.60.025). The receiver takes control, collects the receivables, runs or sells the business and reports to the court. The investigation is what persuades a judge that ordinary writs will not do.

I have a judgment from King County Superior Court. Why haven't I been paid?

If they wouldn't pay before you sued, a judgment won't change their mind. The good news: time is on your side. A Washington judgment lives ten years. In the last 90 days before it dies you can buy it ten more, once, for the price of a civil filing fee. After that, it's paper (RCW 6.17.020). While it lives, it earns: the contract rate on contract judgments, two points over the six-month Treasury rate on most tort judgments, 12 percent on the rest (RCW 4.56.110). The order that works: find the assets in the public record; file an abstract of the judgment with the clerk in every county where the debtor owns land; put the debtor under oath; then garnish or execute. Most unpaid judgments I see never got past step one. That step is mine.

Where does the debtor keep the money?

One more thing callers do not want to hear. By the time a judgment is entered, the checking account is usually the emptiest asset the debtor has. People who expect a writ stop keeping money where a writ can reach it. It sits in a spouse's account or a business account, in a brokerage or a crypto wallet, or it has already turned into a truck, a boat or a down payment.

Not in any database, and anyone who says otherwise is describing a federal crime. Banks do not publish account information, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act makes it a crime to pry it out of one by pretext (15 U.S.C. §6821). The same law binds payment processors and the apps that link to your account. The lawful route runs through the courthouse. Supplemental proceedings under chapter 6.32 RCW put the debtor in a chair, under oath, to say where the money is, and anyone holding the debtor's property can be ordered into the same chair. The order must be served in person, so a debtor who cannot be found cannot be examined; locating comes first. A writ of garnishment under chapter 6.27 RCW then makes the bank say what it holds, less the exemption an individual debtor keeps: $500 on most debts, $2,000 on consumer debt (RCW 6.15.010). A company gets no exemption. It also leaves a far wider paper trail, and I read all of it. What I add is the list of banks worth serving. Deeds of trust, UCC filings, court exhibits, bankruptcy schedules and, where the law allows it, the credit report all name a debtor's lenders, and debtors forget that.

Can I get the debtor's credit report?

Sometimes, and the wrong way hands the debtor a lawsuit. The Fair Credit Reporting Act lets a creditor pull a report to collect an account, and a judgment does not change what the debt was before the lawsuit. A judgment on a loan, a lease or an unpaid invoice qualifies. A judgment for a tort, a business dispute or court-ordered attorney fees does not, and pulling on one is a federal violation with statutory damages. A judge's order also works; a lawyer's subpoena does not. The cleanest route needs neither: the supplemental-proceedings order tells the debtor to bring their own report, which they get free. What any licensed investigator can lawfully buy is the header, not the accounts: names, addresses, dates of birth, employers. That finds the debtor and the paycheck. The rest comes out under oath.

How do I find out what property someone owns in King County?

Not through the Assessor. eReal Property searches by address or parcel, never by name. Go to the Recorder's Landmark Web, type the name as "Last, First," and every deed, deed of trust, lien and easement recorded under it comes up, free. Most Washington recorders will also watch a name for you and email you when anything new is recorded under it; subscribe to your debtor. Snohomish County has made you open a free account since March 2, 2026; Pierce County's ARMS is wide open. The trail goes cold when title sits in an LLC, a trust, a spouse's name or another state. That is where I start.

How do I find out whether a debtor owns a business?

Start at the Secretary of State's Corporations and Charities Filing System and search by governor, not by company. Washington makes every entity list its governors on the annual report, and the statute defines the term to include an LLC's members or managers. Then check the Department of Revenue business lookup for trade names and sole proprietors, who never show up at the Secretary of State, and Labor and Industries' Verify tool for contractors. Search UCC filings at the Department of Licensing, not the Secretary of State; they name the debtor's lenders and the collateral pledged, and the browse setting also turns up IRS liens. The record gives out when a governor is another company, or when someone formed the company in Wyoming, Nevada or Delaware, which sell anonymity. That's when it's time to hire an investigator.

The debtor filed for bankruptcy. Is that the end of it?

Often it is the beginning. A discharge does not reach debts from fraud, embezzlement or willful injury (11 U.S.C. §523), and a creditor can block the whole discharge if the debtor hid property or lied on the schedules. Those schedules are signed under penalty of perjury, and that is where concealment shows: the boat that never made the list, the LLC handed to a brother-in-law eighteen months before filing. The trustee can pull back transfers from the two years before the petition (§548) and from four years back under Washington's Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (chapter 19.40 RCW). The clock is short. An objection to discharge is due 60 days after the first creditors' meeting, and the trustee's avoidance suit two years after the petition. Every Western District docket is on PACER; I read the schedules against the county record and the transfer against the calendar. Trustees and creditors' counsel hire me to find the asset before the deadline does. It is a growing share of my work.

My judgment is from California. Does it work here?

Yes, once you domesticate it. File an authenticated copy with a superior court clerk under the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (chapter 6.36 RCW) and you can enforce it like a Washington judgment, though it dies on the day it would have died in the state that issued it. Chapter 6.40A RCW covers judgments from other countries.

Memberships and certifications

Have a judgment that has gone unpaid?

Since 2016 I have helped more than 100 clients collect on judgments that sat for years. Tell me who owes you and roughly how much. I will run a preliminary search, tell you what the record is likely to show, and quote a fixed price. Trustees and creditors' counsel: I also work fraudulent-transfer and concealed-asset matters in the Western District of Washington.

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